Good Choice For Top State Prosecutor

October 06, 1991

Richard N. Palmer's appointment as chief state's attorney holds great promise. He comes to the state Division of Criminal Justice after a temporary stint as the chief federal prosecutor in Connecticut. Before that, in the same U.S. attorney's office, he was a trial prosecutor, head of the criminal division and deputy.

That federal office has been engaged in many investigations into organized crime, drug activity and political corruption in the state -- most recently resulting in the indictment of several Waterbury officials, including Mayor Joseph J. Santopietro.

Mr. Palmer also has been a defense attorney, which gives him a valuable perspective.

The Criminal Justice Commission has acted wisely in picking the federal prosecutor to take over a division suffering from bad morale, budget cuts and six years under a chief state's attorney, John J. Kelly, who accorded corruption investigations a low priority and often quarreled with the district state's attorneys. Mr. Palmer promises a better relationship with the state's attorneys. He also recognizes the dangers of fighting turf wars with other agencies in the criminal-justice system -- the kind of destructive battle, for example, that went on between the state police and the judiciary and the chief state's attorney in the the mid-1980s.

Most important, the new chief state's attorney says he expects to use the array of investigative tools at his disposal -- including the one-man grand jury -- and target public corruption, environmental crime and organized crime.

That agenda marks a welcome break with the Kelly era at the Division of Criminal Justice.